If you study my current site, you’ll see that most of my main sections link out to other places on the web – my YouTube channel, my podcasts, the speaking page here on College Info Geek, etc. This is a strategic decision – as a professional YouTuber/writer, those are the best places for me to be directing people, since I benefit from people subscribing to my content rather than evaluating it.

Hello Danny, I definitely agree with your thoughts on Weebly, it really is a very easy-to-use platform if you're new to website building. Weebly have made a great effort to ensure the platform (and especially their editor) are as user friendly as possible, which really does make it easier to build a great-looking site without any technical skills! If you feel like your technical skills are up to the challenge then WordPress is definitely worth trying out. Give it a test and see how you get on. Thanks for reading, - Tom

If you are comfortable using a word processing program to write your content, be sure to copy everything and paste it into a text file when you are done. Word processors can add extra formatting to your text that make it display incorrectly if you paste it directly into site building programs or HTML editors. Remembering this easy step can save you hours of frustration during the layout of your website.

With all that being said, I want to share some things you can do to improve your website’s SEO. To keep things simple, we’ll take an 80/20 approach here – as in 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts. Yes, there are lots of tiny little tweaks you can make to marginally improve SEO – and if you’re curious about them, you might want to check out this set of tutorials.

With the website builder software discussed here, it’s no longer expensive for you to build your own website, and you can limit your financial risks as they only charge you a monthly payment (if you decide to upgrade) and you can walk away at any time without getting dragged into a dispute with a website developer. In fact, most of these web builder software have free plans.

Hey Ben, thank you for all the information. I think web site builders in general are a great tool for novice computer users such as myself. I started my own website and it took me only a few hours to do so! I know I might sound childish, but this is unheard of for me. I used the Wix website builder software which was free of charge, and I am contemplating upgrading to the 2nd plan in order to remove the banner ads.

Do it Yourself: There are a number of logo design software out there that will allow you to create your own logo. We recommend Tailor Brands if you want an easy way to create an appealing logo. Once you create your logo, you can subscribe and gain access to branding tools, including seasonal logos, branded social media posts, branding landing pages, and more. You can try it out for free, and if you find a design you like, you can download it for as little as $2.99. Click here to start designing your logo.
These services can host your content on their servers free of charge, but in exchange for that zero cost, your online destination will have a less-than-elegant domain, such as jeffreylwilson.tumblr.com. That might be fine for a personal blog, but it will look too low-rent for a business that wants people to trust it enough to pay for whatever it's selling.
Website builders are a perfect solution for individuals and small businesses to start a website without hiring a developer. The problem is finding the best website builder can be tricky for beginners. With so many website builders out there, how do you know which is the right solution for you? In this article, we’ll help you choose the best website builder by going over the pros and cons of the most popular options.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this guide to creating a website. Remember that nothing you do in website creation is permanent. Many websites evolve as time goes by. The key is to do the best you can in the beginning with your website and to always look for opportunities to improve it. There are always more things to learn, so feel free to visit our Resources and Guides pages to improve your webmaster skills.
Mobile friendly and responsive design means that you don’t need to know how to code — this could even be your first time working with a domain — and setting up your new site requires only a few steps. GoCentral Website Builder is designed to generate style choices that you can quickly review and chose without diving into your site’s settings. This will give your visitor an enjoyable experience that feels natural from either a desktop or mobile device.
Though hosting is included in the free plan, it involves a WordPress subdomain as opposed to a standalone URL. Paid plans, beginning with the Personal plan for $4 per month, allow users to choose custom domains (if they’re available, of course). Each paid plan also provides access to WordPress email and live chat support, while the free offering requires questions or issues be directed to the user community. The higher-level Premium and Business plans supplement the many design features with tools to help monetize your website, if and when you decide the time is right.
Click-to-call buttons are especially helpful if you want mobile visitors to dial your business. This is a button that – when clicked from a mobile phone – automatically populates your business’ phone number into the visitor’s dialpad. An embedded Google Maps widget is also key for customers who are browsing on-the-go, as they can quickly bring up navigation to your store.

As a full-service website development and branding company, Blue Fountain Media offers SMB and enterprise clients websites that are professionally designed and fully optimized. While some "custom" web design companies use house-designed templates to create their products, Blue Fountain Media creates truly one-of-a-kind websites for each business it partners with.

These services can host your content on their servers free of charge, but in exchange for that zero cost, your online destination will have a less-than-elegant domain, such as jeffreylwilson.tumblr.com. That might be fine for a personal blog, but it will look too low-rent for a business that wants people to trust it enough to pay for whatever it's selling.
If you are comfortable using a word processing program to write your content, be sure to copy everything and paste it into a text file when you are done. Word processors can add extra formatting to your text that make it display incorrectly if you paste it directly into site building programs or HTML editors. Remembering this easy step can save you hours of frustration during the layout of your website.
The main advantage with CSS is that you can separate the layout and look of the website from the content of the website. This enables you to make changes to the look of the entire website by changing a single value. For example, when you want to change the font size of all the paragraph text on your website from size 10 to 11 all you need to do is change the size value for

in the style sheet. Changing this one value will change the font size for all the paragraphs on your website. Obviously this is a lot easier then going to every single web page in the site and changing the font size.
All desktop operating systems come with a basic text editor. These editors are all straightforward, but lack special features for webpage coding. If you want something a bit fancier, there are plenty of third-party tools available. Third-party editors often come with extra features, including syntax coloring, auto-completion, collapsible sections, and code search. Here is a short list of editors:
Hi Mike, Interactive map building is something I have very little experience with - I haven't ventured much beyond embedding google maps in iframes such as yourself. I would suggest browsing the app market and 3rd party plugins available on builders like Wix and Weebly, who both offer a huge amount of additional features. It would surprise me if there wasn't a plugin that could help get you on your way. Similarly, you can also find membership area functionality through these app markets. I believe Wix also offers the ability to add member areas and logins though its editor too. Hope that points you in the right direction, - Tom
Hi Jeremy. Superb article, which I would also use to describe the other articles and reviews you have created for building a web site. I've understand that Shopify is your primary recommendation for an ECommerce site. I'd like to see the capability of various vendors availing of our site's services to post and sell their products. Can Shopify handle this as well? Thanks for helping a lot of people! Wishing you more success. JP

Avoid shared hosting – Shared hosting means that you’re sharing a web server with multiple other sites (often hundreds or thousands). It’s slow, and, if you get unlucky and share with spammy sites, your business website could even be penalized by Google. Either VPS (sometimes shared, but in a better way) hosting or dedicated hosting (best option) are solid alternatives.

When you first start using Wix, you can either jump right into the design process or watch video tutorials, of which Wix has many. The setup wizard walks you through each step of the web design process, and the first step is to select a category, or area of business. There are templates for a huge variety of businesses, including fashion and beauty, health and wellness, and food service. It's not just the quantity of templates available that makes Wix a fantastic website-building solution, but also the quality of the designs. No matter what type of business you own, you will find a suitable template through Wix.
Website builders are a perfect solution for individuals and small businesses to start a website without hiring a developer. The problem is finding the best website builder can be tricky for beginners. With so many website builders out there, how do you know which is the right solution for you? In this article, we’ll help you choose the best website builder by going over the pros and cons of the most popular options.
Getting your message out these days requires good helpings of Facebook and Twitter, with maybe a dash of Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr. But that's not enough: if you want an internet presence that truly represents you or your organization, you also need a website that sets you apart from the crowd. A real website, as opposed to a social media page, gives you complete control over design and content. This lends credibility to your business, organization, or personal brand. Facebook pages all look alike in terms of design, but on your own website, you can realize a brand image, offer products for sale, and integrate third-party web services.

I hear your pain. I know creating a website can be daunting, especially to someone who has never ventured into the online world, but let me assure you that its really quite simple. If you don’t want to head down the road of building your own self hosted WordPress site, then I would suggest signing up to WordPress.com. This is the free version of WordPress where you can get your site up and running in no time and with no costs whatsoever. Sounds like you just need a no frills, no bells, no whistles type of website. If that’s the case then WordPress.com could be the option for you.

Hi Gertrudes, I think if you want to build a simpler website, then Squarespace, Weebly and Wix are good candidates for you to test and see which one suits you better. Weebly has the lowest learning curve, then Wix and Squarespace. But from a design perspective, I think Squarespace will give you the most professional and beautiful looking website. All of them are mobile device friendly and so your visitors will be able to find more information about your website through their mobile devices. I think the best way forward is to sign up for them for free, then invest some time to play around with their tools and see for yourself which one you prefer. It's a very personal choice when it comes to which builder interface you prefer, so investing a bit of time in testing them out is well worth it. - Jeremy

If you're on a Mac however, there's another option: RapidWeaver. This WYSIWYG webpage editor has full code access and FTP support for uploading pages. There are plenty of built-in templates to get started, all for the one-time price of $99.99. On Windows there are numerous choices. Xara Web Designer 365, for example, starts at $49.99 and promises you don't need to know HTML or Javascript to create sites based on the company's templates.

The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get yourself a domain name. This is the name you want to give to your website. For example, the domain name of the website you're reading is "thesitewizard.com". To get a domain name, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. Getting a name does not get you a website or anything like that. It's just a name. It's sort of like registering a business name in the brick-and-mortar world; having that business name does not mean that you also have the shop premises to go with it.
Some web designers / developers like to install WordPress manually to get a custom install of the components they want and don’t want. Others will need to manually install because their web host does not have the “1-click-installation” capability. If this applies to you then you’ll need to have a quick read through of my Manual WordPress Set-Up Guide.
Because today, after 4years and half of development, well, I can code in C/C++ (advanced programs), .NET (WPF, UWP, Xamarin), Java (Softwares, Android), Go (API, WS) but I never did any website or webapp, so I would like to get into it. I feel like today it’s an important part so why not. But yeah, I feel like WordPress is high-level and I’m more a low-level dev, so what would be the best way to start or just the best approach overall?
Jeremy, I believe this article is really helpful to cross the initial mental hurdle of making a website. I do also want to build a website. But before getting started few questions are coming into my mind. Brief about my planned website: A website strictly user login based. User can upload audio, video, image and text files or may be youtube/soundcloud links. Those uploaded files should be played or displayed on the website UI only. Users can view/like/share other users' uploaded files or can download on basis of permission given during upload. Now my questions: 1. Is this really possible to build this kind of website though the online website builders? if yes, then: 2. Which builder will be best suited for my requirements? 3. Who will give me this amount of cloud storage? How much will it cost? 4. How do I write decision making codes inside? 5. How do I maintain database and run query on database? 6. How can I get money from my website (without advertisements)? Who will pay me money and how? See, I am an IT professional (though not working in web development domain). I have no issue in writing codes, but I was wondering if I could do it with shorter timespan and lesser amount of maintenance effort. That's why I was going through your blog. Lastly, if you really believe that it is quite impossible to build this kind of website online, please suggest me what should be the best way to build it from scratch. What framework should I use (I know Java and Python both)? But in that case also, one question still remains: how can I earn from this kind of website? Thanking you in advance.
There are a number of free and commercial web editors available. If you use Windows, one of the best around is Microsoft Expression Web. This was a formerly commercial program that Microsoft now distributes for free, presumably because they no longer want to be in the web editor business. It is fully-featured and very polished (as befits software that was once sold in shops) with facilities that both new and experienced webmasters find useful. You can find a guide on how to use this program from my Expression Web Tutorial. The latter takes you through the process of designing a fully functional multi-page website that is mobile-friendly (that is, your site will work well on both desktop/laptop computers and the smaller screens of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets). Instructions on how to get the editor can also be found in that tutorial.

Hi Jeremy, It's a fantastic article. I admire you the way you articulated this. I am planning to build a website. It would be more like, subscribers can post a question and the reply to this question feed will comprise an attachment that needs to send to a specific mail id. Could you please suggest me which website builder suits most for this use case? Thanks, Sri

After you have chosen the winning design, you will need to find someone to code the design for your website. 99designs has coding partners that will be able to do this for you and who have experience working with templates from 99designs. Typically the cost to code 1 responsive page (a page that also works on mobile) is $300, and each inner page (all pages other than the homepage) costs around $150.

In summary, learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery and Python/web2py. This will help you create your full-featured website as easily as possible and as quickly as possible without much fuss. And it’ll be lots of fun, too, because web2py is a wonderful framework that comes with everything you need right out of the box! Batteries are included. One-stop shopping for web development!
Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wix is the third-most reviewed product in the Website Builder category on G2 Crowd. Since 2006, this platform has helped businesses of all sizes — along with creative individuals — create vivid, respectable websites using an intuitive set of tools. Today, users can take advantage of 500-plus templates created by the designer community or build atop a blank page to bring their website vision to fruition. The company made headlines in 2016 by introducing Wix ADI, a feature that generates unique websites in minutes based on the user’s answers to a few key questions, with help from artificial intelligence technology.
I am currently looking at setting up a blog for the area I specialise in. I am aware of wordpress.org but have been a bit daunted by the number of webhosts out there offering this and that. One particular issue is that I use macs and I was wondering whether bluehost is compatible with the mac, and whether there are any other extra steps I have to take when using a mac over windows. Would it be as simple as registering with a webhost then clicking one-step installation on a mac?

The major player in the blog game is WordPress, a content management system (CMS) that powers millions of websites, including The New York Times, Quartz, and Variety. WordPress-powered sites are incredibly easy to set up, customize, and update—ideally on a daily basis. You aren't required to learn fancy-schmancy FTP tricks (though you can certainly use them if you like), and there are ridiculous numbers of free and paid WordPress themes and WordPress plug-ins to give your website a pretty face and vastly expanded functionality. Though WordPress dominates the blogging space, it isn't the only blogging CMS of note, however.

Things to look as you vet hosts for ecommerce include drag-and-drop store builders, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) software for safeguarding financial transactions, and email marketing plug-ins, so that you don't have to work with an outside vendor to promote your business. There's nothing wrong per se with using an unconnected marketing service, but anything that adds convenience means more time to spend on the rest of your business. For more in-depth advice on getting started selling online, you should consider our story on the 6 Factors Companies Need to Consider When Choosing a Web Host.

Some web design tools and services are intended for personal use and lack the built-in functionality that serious business users need. To identify the best and brightest, our team reviewed some of the biggest names in the web design software and services business, taking careful note of usability, flexibility, integration, customer service and other factors that are important to entrepreneurs.
If you prefer a more traditional URL, you'll need to purchase one from the likes of GoDaddy or Namecheap. Domain name pricing can range from extremely cheap to extremely expensive, depending on whether or not domain squatters are looking to flip a valuable piece of online real estate. You'll want to get something short but evocative and catchy, and depending on what you do, you may find that many of your first choices are taken by either other legit domains, or by squatters who've scooped up the names as an investment. For more, please read How to Register a Domain Name.
I want to create a website where can I post the restaurant and retirement home business of my hubby. I would like to edit the website at least monthly depending on our promotional activities. No payment option needed yet but a simple information for local customers and travelers as well. We want our website displays when people searched from their phone while on their travel since our place is in between 2 big cities. I trust you, and since I described my main objective which one do you highly recommend?
All of the web services listed here have you start by choosing from a selection of templates for your site. The better ones, such as Duda, Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix, use templates that automatically reformat your site for viewing on mobile devices. They also offer specifically targeted templates based on your site's purpose, such as for promoting a bakery's sales, getting gigs for a musician, or keeping wedding guests informed.
Hi Joe, I'm not entirely sure to be perfectly honest. I'd imagine you would have to have the ability to host the domain name, help your customers connect the domain names to their websites, etc. The website builders mentioned above are probably not equipped for the unique requirements that a domain name registrar need in order to run its business properly. I'd imagine a lot of the functions will be pretty customized. Jeremy

Don’t be fooled by the silly name; when it comes to building websites, Weebly is serious business. This drag-and-drop platform is specialized for both traditional websites and online stores and also can churn out lovely digital portfolios and event pages. E-commerce features are only offered with paid plans, starting at $8 per month, but anyone can create unlimited, hosted pages on a personal or business site for a goose egg (aka zero dollars).

As you search for the best paid professional website creators, it's important to find the one that caters to your interests and business goals specifically. Wix, for example, allows you to select an industry type as you choose the theme of your site. From there, you still have control over the elements that go on the page, but it provides an industry-specific background and a host of images that correspond to the type of service you've chosen. The templates range from a restaurant to a community page or an art portfolio, among several others. Most of the services on our lineup limit the number of sites you can create; however, Weebly, Duda and SpaceCraft all offer an unlimited number of both websites and webpages.
Thanks for the article Jermey. I was looking into making a site that serves dual functions. I wanted to create an entertainment news site that also functions as an online business. I purchased a subscription with godaddy for an online shop, but the templates are pretty bland and the customization is dreadful. Is there a site you could recommend for something like that?
Hey Jeremy, Awesome article. I especially like the flow and the logical approach that you took to educate people. This is the article I point clients to, to get them up to speed before starting projects. I think it's important for them to know how their products work. While they aren't making their own sites, it definitely still fits the bill. Also, I'm curious as to what you think about WooCommerce these days. I didn't seem them on the list in the other article you wrote "Best Ecommerce Software". Anyways, I've been sending my clients here for a while now and just want to give you a shout out at a job well done! If you are able to send me an email, I do have a question I'd like to ask if you have the time.